There is no s.p.a.ce to be lonely any more And crumbling feet on a city street Sound past the door.

TO A SICK CHILD

At the end of the day The sun rusts.

The street is old and quiet.

The houses are of iron.

The shadows are iron.

Shrill screams of children sc.r.a.pe the iron sky.

Let us lock ourselves in the light.

Let the sun nail us to the hot earth with his spikes of fire, And perhaps when the darkness rushes past It will forget us.

LOVE SONG

(To C. K. S.)

Little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover, How can I go on living With you away from me?

How can I get up in the morning And go to bed at night, And you not here?

How can I bear the sunrise and the sunset, And the moonrise and the moonset, And the flowers in the garden?

How can I bear them, You, My little father, Little mother, Little sister, Little brother, Little lover?

QUARREL

Abruptly, from a wall of clear cold silence Like an icy gla.s.s, Myself looked out at me And would not let me pa.s.s.

I wanted to reach you Before it was too late; But my frozen image barred the way With vacant hate.

MY CHILD

Tentacles thrust imperceptibly into the future Helplessly sense the fire.

A serpentine nerve Impelled to lengthen itself generation after generation Pierces the labyrinth of flames To rose-colored extinction.

THE TUNNEL

I

I have made you a child in the womb, Holding you in sweet and final darkness.

All day as I walk out I carry you about.

I guard you close in secret where Cold eyed people cannot stare.

I am melted in the warm dear fire, Lover and mother in the same desire.

Yet I am afraid of your eyes And their possible surprise.

Would you be angry if I let you know That I carried you so?

II

I could kiss you to death Hoping that, your protest obliterated, You would be Utterly me.

Yet I know--how well!-- Like a sh.e.l.l, Hollow and echoing, Death would be, With a roar of the past Like the roar of the sea.

And what is lifeless I cannot kill!

So you would make death work your will.

III

In most intimate touch we meet, Lip to lip, Breast to breast, Sweet.

Suddenly we draw apart And start.

Like strangers surprised at a road's turning We see, I, the naked you; You, the naked me.

There was something of neither of us That covered the hours, And we have only touched each other's bodies Through veils of flowers.

But let us smile kindly, Like those already dead, On the warm flesh And the marriage bed.

IV

The blanched stars are withered with light.

The moon is pale with trying to remember something.

Light, straining for a stale birth, Distends the darkness.

I, in the midst of this travail, Bring forth-- The solitude is so vast I am glad to be freed of it.

Is it the moon I see there, Or does my own white face Hang in blank agony against the sky As if blinded with giving?

V

Little inexorable lips at my breast Drink me out of me In a fine sharp stream.

Little hands tear me apart To find what they need.

I am weak with love of you, Little body of hate!

BRUISED SUNLIGHT

WATER MOODS

RAIN ON THE SEASh.o.r.e

Curling petals of rain lick silver tongues.

Fluffy spray is blown loosely up between thin silver lips And slithers, tinkling in hard green ice, down the gray rocks.

White darkness-- An expressionless horizon stares with stone eyes.

The sea lifts its immense self heavily And falls down in sickly might.

The emptiness is like a death of which no one shall ever know.

SHIP MASTS

They stand Stark as church spires; Bare stalks That will blossom (Tomorrow perhaps) Into flowers of the wind.

MONOCHROME

Gray water, Gray sky drifting down to the sea.

The night, Old, ugly, and stern, Lies upon the water, Quivering in the twilight Like a tortured belly.

ANTIQUE